Care To Grade My 1799 Bust Dollar?

AU-50

My grade is AU-50. I think NGC gave it AU-53.

I'll go with 53, but not much experience here. Wonderful, like all of Bill's coins.

I would think AU-55.

The short answer is NGC graded this 1799 Bust Dollar AU-55. This coin offers an example of how coin grading has changed over the years.

I first saw this coin in 1979. An older gentleman who was a member of a local club showed to me. I wanted to buy it, but he didn't want to sell. He did let me take it and photograph it.

Five or six years later, this gentlemen offered the coin to me. He and his wife were going to Bermuda and needed some extra cash. He wanted the AU price for it, but I told him I couldn't pay that because it was an EF-45, not an AU-50.

Finally he sent it to ANACS to be graded. If came back as an AU-50, I'd pay him his price. If it came back as an EF, I'd pay my price. ANACS, which was still owned by the ANA at that time, graded it EF-45, and I bought it for the EF-45 price. The coin was in one of those small ANACS white bordered slabs.

Twenty years later I decided to have the better coins in my collection graded by PCGS and NGC. I cracked the coin out of the ANACS slab and sent it to NGC. They graded it AU-55.

The coin is now an AU using the modern standards. Whether or not it is an AU-55 might be debatable, but given the luster and original surfaces, I wouldn't grade less than AU-53.

So there you see how grading has changed over almost a 30 year period.

I'll get to the 1795 Flowing Hair dollar I posted later. It has an interesting story too.

Good question!

I maxed the grade out at only 53.

That's a beautiful coin with tons of history behind it.